


Eternal Wild

by daedalust



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Feral Behavior, First Dates, M/M, Museum Date, Post-Timeskip, Touch-Starved, Warning: Dog Will Bite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daedalust/pseuds/daedalust
Summary: Tsukishima Kei lets Kyoutani Kentarou enter his domain: the Sendai City Museum at midnight.
Relationships: Kyoutani Kentarou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Eternal Wild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fatal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatal/gifts).



> here is your feral kyoukei elo i hope you enjoy it

_ 26 Kawauchi. _ Kyoutani gazes up from the blue screen of his phone as he’s reached his destination, standing in the pavilion before the Sendai City Gymnasium. Rigid, stone prisms come together to form cold steps and structures while orange-yellow light pours from the glass windows, spilling before his feet. When he steps in through the entrance, he feels as if he’s stepped a thousand or so years back in time. 

Kyoutani is dressed in what his old senpai would have jokingly called “city trash.” The moment he looked back at the outfit Yahaba picked out for him, fussing over how hard it was to find an outfit to match his hair— he bleached and shaved it himself, on impulse— he had the sense that he was wearing someone’s else’s skin. It was the same feeling he felt as he entered this world of still statues, the reconnaissance point for snobiety and intellectuals, who pore over the relics left by fallen warriors and reframe the savagery of battle into sophisticated text. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, a swain in the king’s palace.

He’s entered Tsukishima Kei’s domain at night, accepting an invitation that he wonders if he’ll regret later. 

Tsukishima walks through the lobby like he’s at home, rather than a place of work. In a hallway of centuries old armor, national treasures, and still life, he’s the only thing that’s walking, living, breathing. Kyoutani watches Kei from the corner of his ringed eye, breathing slowly to cut the sharpness in his chest. He refuses to be the first one to give himself up, whether that be a greeting or his heart.

Tsukishima’s stony face breaks into a leering grin. “Ease up a little bit,  _ Kyouken _ . You’re in a museum, not a funeral home,” he taunts, like it’s as easy as breathing.

Kyoutani exhales, his mind buzzing at the sight of Tsukishima Kei in casual-formal clothes, framed glasses, and not a bead of sweat to be seen on his porcelain face. He would have never guessed this was the same Tsukishima Kei that he called his teammate, the no-frills middle blocker who withstood the force of enemy spikes as it was nothing and manipulated the court with his tacit understanding of people and movement. This Tsukishima felt more dangerous. Personal.

“I don’t go to places like this,” Kyoutani grunts, shoving his hands back into his pockets. He hates the feeling of having Kei’s attention solely on him, already wondering how he was enchanted into this situation.

Tsukishima Kei is someone who rarely wants anything. He’s one of those people that sees  _ want _ as a sign of some kind of human weakness, an act that jeopardizes one’s sense of self for something as silly as desire. At the same time, Kei is human. He’s not immune to wants or desires— actually, he wonders if he experiences them more intensely than the average person, which is why he’s become the way he is. When he’s fought all of his inner mechanisms to reach a point where he knows what he wants, he does everything in his power to make it happen.

Three days ago, Tsukishima walked into the Sendai Frogs locker room, a towel slung around his neck and an expression softer than he’d ever dared to let anyone else see. Kyoutani was hunched over the bench, tired and vulnerable after another grueling practice of following along to Koganegawa’s exuberant tempo, and Tsukishima took a seat next to him, teasing his stamina and likening it to the samurai warriors that he spent his day-job describing to audiences. Samurais and monuments turned into talk about Date Masamune and his conquests. Legends and truths blended in an invitation from Kei to Kyoutani, asking him if he was interested in learning more about relentless soldiers just like him from lost times. 

Kyoutani, who was far more interested in learning more about Kei than himself, said yes.

Kei extends a finger toward the collection before him, relishing in being the only knowledgeable person in an empty museum. “You wanted to see the museum at night,” he muses. He doesn’t ask if it’s something that Kyoutani wants, because he knows. 

Kei begins his performance, leading Kyoutani down hallways of time and space, guiding him with his lofty voice, pinpointing the various details of their surroundings. Thirty minutes pass, and with each liminal space in time, Kei waits for questions but receives none in response, a part of him finding the gruff wall of silence charming.

They move to a room with smooth, polished wood floors and a digital display of facts and time periods, an overload of too much information to process for Kyoutani. He’s at the mercy of time and history, as Kei describes it, clinging onto each piece of disseminated information. Kei holds the world at his fingertips, the spikers at his mercy, with such delicate hands, repeating the mantra he utters every day at work, in a clear voice. Kyoutani isn’t here for robots or computers.

“Is this what you tell everyone else every day?” Kyoutani says restlessly, agitated by Kei’s detached manner of speaking.

“You’re getting a tour for free and want to issue demands?” Kei turns around from Date Masamune’s armor, his lips curling into a sneer. The light off the display casts a malevolent glint across his glasses, a sign that he’s fully aware of every moving piece of Kyoutani’s mind and what he’s keeping at bay. “Then say the words.”

“What words?”

“What you want. I’m waiting.”

Kyoutani Kentarou has always hated order. He was born from a difficult birth with an upbringing that the average Japanese household would have described as “hellish.” Though his heart was kind and he found solace with animals (who like him expressed love through savagery and actions rather than curated words), he was a caged beast in a realm governed by rules and rulers he never wanted to bend to. At Seijoh, he was allowed to run wild and free as a pawn in Oikawa Tooru’s grand vision for their team with wall-shattering spikes and insane freedom. That was, until he was pinned to the ground by metal pillars that came in the form of Iwaizumi Hajime and Yahaba Shigeru. Brakes far more powerful than he was that grounded him and forced him to face the stillness, silence, and organization of the world that he wanted to disrupt so badly. The stillness, silence, and organization that surrounds him now in this museum, a different world he’s thrust himself into because he wants to know Tsukishima Kei. He wants to study the new pillar in his life, the one that blocks his mind’s eye and sticks a spanner in his asynchronous gears.

What Kyoutani wants is to destroy all of the order in his surroundings. To tear off these “too-tight date clothes” that Yahaba handpicked for him. To rip apart the displays around him, that try to tell him how he’s supposed to imagine the past is like. To shatter all of the glass that holds him back from touching and feeling his way through history. To sink his claws into Tsukishima Kei and find out what he was made up of, because he had never known such a monster before.

But he refuses to say it. 

Kei steps forward, his next words splashing Kyoutani like a bucket of water. “You want  _ me _ , don’t you? You couldn’t care less about these silly stories I’m telling you, lessons of the past that you feel have no relevance to your future,” Kei reaches out to grab Kyoutani’s shoulder. His grip is gentle, but Kyoutani thinks he’s being held by a vice. “You’re a schoolboy with a crush.”

With each “you”, Kyoutani feels as if he’s being christened with a new identity, his frame recoiling from the cold splashes of water that wash away the hardened paint exterior he’s built up for so long. He sees clearer than he’s ever seen before, sees that Kei has been working on softening him for consumption for months. Each accidental brush of hands, the casual rides home, sparing words of flattery, Kyoutani realizes it’s deliberate. 

“How did you know?” Kyoutani breathes. He’s been knocked off his feet by a surprise whirlwind, Kei being the only support he can hold on to. They’re so close together that they can taste the scent of each others’ breaths.

“I read spikers,” Kei says simply, gripping Kyoutani’s arm. He casts looks around him, reminding him that they’re completely alone in the museum, surrounded by the mountains with not a single person existing for miles. “And no one reads me.”

Kyoutani knows the next words he says will bring him to a place that he’s never set foot in. A new page in a book he’s given up authorship to. But he’s weak at the sight of Kei’s weakness, and falls forward like he’s supposed to, the next words leaving his mouth sealing whatever past he had with Kei behind and opening up a future that he’s hoped for. The reason he’s here tonight.

  
  


“I’ve wanted to.”

  
  


And Kei lets him in. Kyoutani’s lips press against his, placing a key into the keyhole and twisting to open up the doors to a new world. A place where his discord is welcome, a turbulent breeze that knocks over everything Kei has set up so neatly. Kyoutani’s breath fogs up Kei’s glasses, obscuring the windows to his eyes. For so long, they’ve stood still like two monoliths, never daring to bridge the gap that existed between them. But finally, when they’re in motion, they move like a bullet train. One gesture bleeding into the other, intimacy boundless.

“Kyouken,” Kei whispers, his face centimeters away from Kyoutani’s. His breath is musky and warm, with hints of kahlua and earth, intoxicated by the sight of his prey. “You’ll never disappoint me, right?”

He rolls down the knitted beige turtleneck, exposing a bare canvas of flesh between his neck and collarbone. It’s a test. Kyoutani doesn’t think as he reaches out to stroke the side of it. It’s so soft and pure, like how he imagines the untouchable marble statues in the room beside them to feel like. “Kei,” Kyoutani mutters, his senses alight.

“Prove your loyalty to me,” Kei eggs on the wild dog, his lips pursed, half an expression away from a sneer. “Show me there’s such foolish things in the world like eternity.”

Kyoutani doesn’t hesitate, and Kei doesn’t scream. He bites, knowing full well he is a prey animal under hypnosis. He knows that even as he inflicts pain, he’s never been in control. Kei is a predator who wields vulnerability like a charm, a tamer who lets his subjects sample what control feels like, only to snatch it away at the last second. He looks up reproachfully at Kei with large eyes, asking wordlessly if he’s satisfied his master’s request.

“No,” Kei says softly, pulling Kyoutani’s face off his collar by his hair. He thinks of how the eyes gazing back at him remind him of a king he had known once. Reluctance. Fear of letting go. “You’re still scared of hurting me, aren’t you?”

When he’s with Kei, he feels like hiding. He wants to run, even if his legs are at risk of giving way. Kyoutani wildly searches for an exit in the darkness of the museum, but it’s hopeless. Paintings, statues, marble, shadows, there’s no open door. He’s stepped into a domain where the moon is the only light he’s allowed to see. And Kei was the moon.

Kyoutani bites again in the same spot, lunging like an animal fighting his way out of a trap. Kei lets out a gasp. He doesn’t expect this ferocity, especially from someone he’s just wounded with so few words, but Kyoutani is wild. He doesn’t adhere to the laws of nature like the people Kei has known before. He doesn’t bend in the ways that Kei knows how to twist people. 

Kei feels as if he’s found an equal. He holds the sides of Kyoutani’s face in his hand, no longer having to translate his desire into languages he struggles with understanding, like tenderness. He stares at the contorted, snarling face before him, finding love in the jagged canines of Kyoutani’s smile and salvation in the fact that none of them are wearing masks. Because Kyoutani searches willingly for what Kei provides. An eternal symbiosis of emotions. Nothing domestic, only wild. He doesn’t know what’s starting between them, only that each touch is loaded like a spring that’s been ready to snap since the day they gazed up at each other at orientation, two winters ago. 

They only meet at night, but those nights become endless stretches of fire. 

  
  



End file.
